Mid-term rentals near hospitals work because they change who the guest is, not how well you market the listing. Instead of competing on nightly rate against thousands of vacation listings, you rent furnished units by the month to travel nurses, doctors, and patients recovering from procedures — people who need 30 to 90 days in place and are not shopping for a beach view.
Herold Pierre runs four furnished units in South Florida built around this exact model, plus two conventional long-term rentals in areas he says are not suited to nightly use. He reports occupancy around 85% on the furnished side, largely because longer bookings remove the vacancy gaps that eat nightly-rental revenue.
Below: why saturation and short-term rental bans pushed him out of the vacation play, how the economics shift when stays get longer, what he still runs as straight long-term rentals and why, and a checklist for testing whether your own market supports this.
Key takeaways
- Competition in vacation markets like Miami and South Beach is severe, and many major cities ban short-term rentals outright — verify local rules before underwriting any nightly-use assumption.
- Pierre reports roughly 85% occupancy on his furnished units because 30-to-90-day medical stays eliminate the booking gaps that drag down nightly rentals.
- Medical guests — travel nurses, doctors, post-procedure patients — pay above conventional long-term rent without the partier problem, meaning less wear, fewer complaints, and fewer neighbor issues.
- Position furnished inventory near hospital and medical campuses, not tourist corridors, and list on furnished-housing channels like Furnished Finder rather than relying only on nightly platforms.
- A cheap basis can make a below-market long-term rent the smarter play; Pierre has held the same tenants 10+ years by renting slightly under market and still stays profitable.
From the Real Estate Pros Show
This article draws on an interview with Herold Pierre of Underlytics on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Issa Hanna.
Why Vacation Rentals Stopped Penciling in South Florida
Two forces pushed Pierre out of the standard vacation-rental play in South Florida: everyone else is already doing it, and in a lot of the best locations it is not legal.
“Everyone wants to come to Miami,” as he puts it — which is exactly the problem. In South Beach and the surrounding submarkets, the supply of nightly listings is deep and the competition for bookings is, in his words, pretty stiff. Adding another two-bedroom with a beach-themed listing photo does not change your position in that queue. You end up buying occupancy with price.
The second force is regulatory. Many major cities carry outright bans on short-term rentals, and South Florida’s municipalities are no exception. That means a nightly-use assumption in your underwriting is not a market question, it is a legal one — and the answer changes by city, sometimes by zoning district. An investor who buys on pro-forma nightly rates in a jurisdiction that later enforces or expands a ban is holding a property whose business model just evaporated.
There is a demand-side risk on top of both. Pierre points to signs that leisure travel has softened — hotel vacancy rising, and a report he read that Disney World was a ghost town during the summer. His read is simple: Disney is expensive, discretionary travel gets cut first, and any inventory whose income depends entirely on vacationers inherits that volatility.
The response was not better marketing. It was changing the guest to one whose reason for traveling is not discretionary.
The Mid-Term Rental Model: Hospital Demand Instead of Tourist Demand
The model is straightforward: furnished units positioned near hospitals rather than near beaches, rented in blocks of weeks or months instead of nights.
Pierre currently runs four of them. His guest mix is travel nurses, doctors and other medical professionals on contract, plus patients who came to South Florida for a procedure and are required to remain in place for a period afterward. That last group is worth noting — it is demand that exists independent of the local employment base and independent of tourism.
Stay length is what changes the economics. A guest booking 30, 60 or 90 days pays more than a conventional unfurnished lease would generate, because they are paying for furniture, utilities, and the ability to move in with a suitcase. But you are not cleaning and re-listing every three nights, not managing a constant inbound-message load, and not absorbing a platform’s nightly fee structure on every turn. You capture something close to short-term economics with something close to long-term stability.
Distribution is different too. These guests do not generally search vacation platforms. They search furnished-housing channels — Furnished Finder is the one Pierre named, and it is the one most travel nurses use — and increasingly they come through recruiting agencies and word of mouth among contract staff.
Host Issa Hanna, whose wife worked as a travel respiratory therapist, framed Pierre’s four units as carrying roughly what eight conventional rentals would. Treat that as one operator’s framing, not a multiple you can underwrite to. The point underneath it is real: furnished medical-stay rent sits meaningfully above unfurnished market rent for the same unit.
I’m not attracting the partiers. I’m attracting travel nurses, medical professionals, doctors — and a lot of times people that are here for a medical procedure, who have to remain in place for a period of time after. So I don’t have the major gaps where the unit is vacant. My occupancy rate is probably at 85%.
— Herold Pierre, South Florida investor and founder of Underlytics
Occupancy, Guest Quality, and the Gap Problem
The number Pierre gives is about 85% occupancy across his furnished units — and he attributes it specifically to the absence of gap days.
That is the mechanic worth understanding. A nightly rental can book well and still bleed revenue through the three-day holes between a Sunday checkout and a Thursday check-in. Those gaps are unsellable and they compound across a year. A single 13-week nurse contract eliminates 90 days of that problem in one booking. Two contracts back to back and you have effectively run the unit like a lease with furnished-rate economics.
Guest quality is the second effect, and it shows up in your expense line rather than your revenue line. “I’m not attracting the partiers,” Pierre says. He is renting to people who work 12-hour shifts at a hospital and to patients recovering from surgery. That population produces less wear on the unit, fewer damage claims, fewer noise complaints, and far fewer of the neighbor conflicts that get short-term rentals reported to the city in the first place.
What you should verify locally, because one operator’s numbers are not market averages:
- Hospital and medical campus footprint — how many beds, and is it a facility that actually staffs with travelers?
- Competing furnished supply — how many listings already sit within a reasonable commute of those campuses, and what are they asking monthly?
- Contract-length patterns — 13-week assignments are common in nursing, but the mix of contract lengths in your market determines how often you turn the unit.
What Mid-Term Guests Fix That Nightly Guests Don’t
Beyond occupancy, mid-term guests solve three operating problems that nightly rentals create structurally.
They reduce your exposure to regulation. Most short-term rental ordinances define the restricted activity by stay length — typically rentals under 30 days. A 60-day medical stay frequently falls outside that definition entirely. This is jurisdiction-specific and you need to confirm it locally rather than assume it, but it is the reason mid-term inventory survives in cities where nightly inventory gets shut down.
They smooth the revenue curve. Vacation demand is seasonal and discretionary. Hospital staffing demand is neither. Travel nurse contracts get filled because a unit is short-staffed in February the same as in July, and a patient’s post-procedure recovery window does not move because airfare got expensive. Pierre’s read on softening leisure travel is exactly why he wanted income that does not depend on someone deciding they can afford a trip.
They cut management load per dollar of revenue. Four units turning twice a year is a different business than four units turning ninety times a year. Fewer cleanings, fewer check-in messages, fewer keys, fewer listing updates. For an operator running other businesses — Pierre is building software full-time alongside this — that matters more than the last 5% of gross rent.
The tradeoff is real and you should price it: you carry furnishing cost up front, you pay utilities and internet, and when a unit does sit empty it sits empty for a month, not a weekend. Underwrite the vacancy in month-sized blocks.
Choosing Between Long-Term, Mid-Term, and Short-Term in One Portfolio
Pierre does not run everything as a mid-term rental, and the reason is basis.
He holds two conventional long-term rentals in South Florida areas he says are not suited to short-term use — wrong location, wrong guest profile, and in some cases wrong rules. He bought those properties when the market was favorable, and that low basis changes what the right strategy is. Because his cost is low, he can rent slightly below market and still be, in his words, extremely profitable.
That below-market rent is a deliberate retention tactic, not generosity. Those tenants have been in place more than ten years. He has effectively traded a few percent of gross rent for near-zero turnover, no make-ready costs, no vacancy, and no leasing time. On a property bought cheap enough, that trade is clearly correct.
The decision rule that falls out of this:
- Low basis, ordinary location: long-term rental at or slightly below market. Your return is already made on the buy. Optimize for tenant retention and low operating drag.
- Higher basis, near a hospital or medical campus: furnished mid-term. You need the rent premium to hit your number, and the location supports it.
- Nightly use: only where it is unambiguously legal and where you have a genuine competitive position, not just proximity to a tourist draw.
The mistake is applying one strategy portfolio-wide. A property you bought at a great price does not need furnished rents to perform, and forcing a mid-term model onto it just adds furnishing cost and management work to a deal that was already working.
How to Pressure-Test This Strategy in Your Market
Run these in order before you buy anything on a mid-term thesis.
- Confirm the rules first. Check the municipality and any HOA or condo association for short-term rental restrictions and for how they define minimum stay. Do not assume nightly use is legal because listings exist — some of those listings are non-compliant. Regulation is local; verify it with the jurisdiction, and get a local attorney involved if the language is ambiguous.
- Map medical campuses, not tourist corridors. Plot hospitals, surgical centers, rehab facilities and large clinics. Then look at drive time from candidate properties. A nurse working nights wants a short, simple commute more than she wants a nice neighborhood.
- Test demand on furnished-housing platforms before you commit. Search Furnished Finder and comparable channels for your target area. Count active listings, note monthly asking rates, and watch how quickly listings disappear. Thin supply next to a large hospital is the signal you are looking for; forty competing listings is not.
- Underwrite to realistic occupancy. Pierre’s 85% is his result in his market with his units. Model your own deal conservatively, and model vacancy in month-long increments rather than as a flat percentage, because that is how it actually arrives.
- Price the furnishing and reset honestly. Full furnishing, linens, kitchen goods, utilities, internet, and a deep reset between guests. Then offset it against how few turns a mid-term tenant creates compared to nightly use. The comparison only makes sense as a full-year number.
If the hospital demand is there and the rules permit it, this is a repositioning you can often do to inventory you already own.
Frequently asked questions
What is a mid-term rental and how is it different from an Airbnb?
A mid-term rental is a fully furnished unit rented in blocks of weeks or months — commonly 30 to 90 days — rather than by the night. The unit looks like a short-term rental in every physical respect: furniture, linens, kitchenware, utilities and internet included.
The difference is stay length, and it changes almost everything downstream. You turn the unit a couple of times a year instead of dozens, you sit outside most short-term rental ordinances that restrict stays under 30 days, and you market on furnished-housing platforms rather than vacation booking sites.
Why target hospitals instead of tourist areas for furnished rentals?
Because hospital demand is non-discretionary and tourist demand is not. Travel nurses take contracts because a facility is short-staffed, and patients stay near a hospital because a procedure requires it. Neither decision depends on how someone feels about the economy.
Tourist corridors also carry the two problems Pierre identified in South Florida: heavy competition from other nightly listings, and short-term rental bans in many major cities. Hospital-adjacent inventory generally faces less of both.
What occupancy rate can a mid-term rental near a hospital realistically hold?
Pierre reports roughly 85% across his four furnished South Florida units, driven by longer bookings that eliminate gap nights. That is one operator’s result in one market, not a benchmark you should plug into a spreadsheet.
Your own number depends on how many travelers the nearby facilities actually use, how much competing furnished supply exists, and what contract lengths dominate locally. Underwrite conservatively and model vacancy as whole empty months, since that is how it shows up in a mid-term business.
Where do investors find travel nurse and medical-stay tenants?
Furnished Finder is the platform Pierre named and the one most travel healthcare workers use when searching for housing near an assignment. It is built specifically for this guest type rather than for vacationers.
Beyond that, direct relationships with hospital staffing coordinators and travel nursing agencies produce repeat placements, and word of mouth inside a hospital’s traveler community tends to fill units without any listing at all once you have a few good stays behind you.
Does it ever still make sense to keep a property as a long-term rental instead?
Yes — and basis is the deciding factor. Pierre keeps two properties as conventional long-term rentals because he bought them at a favorable price, which means he can rent slightly below market, hold the same tenants for more than ten years, and still be profitable.
If your cost basis already produces the return you need, adding furnishing costs and management work to chase a higher gross rent is usually a bad trade. Furnished mid-term rents are most valuable when you need the premium to make the deal work.
The bottom line
Before you underwrite anything, pull the short-term rental ordinance for the specific municipality and check how it defines minimum stay — that single answer determines whether the nightly play is even available to you, and it is the fastest way to find out whether the hospital-adjacent mid-term model is the better use of your next furnished unit.
